M1: The Crab Nebula
The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object onCharles Messier’sfamous 18th century list of things which are not comets.In fact,the Crabis now known to be asupernova remnant,debris from the death explosion of a massive star,witnessedby astronomers in the year 1054.This sharp, ground-basedtelescopic view combines broadband color data withnarrowband data that tracks emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, andoxygen atoms to explore the tangled filaments withinthe still expanding cloud.
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